36 million people watched, single keyboard became popular on TikTok!

Since the beginning of 2021, TikTok is really everywhere! TikTok is bringing about the rise of a new model of cross-border e-commerce.

36 million people watched, a single keyboard stood out from 900 million topic tags

According to a new study from Accenture, in just three years, people will use social media to buy $1.2 trillion worth of goods worldwide. This figure is far higher than the $492 billion in sales currently achieved through social media platforms.

In this process, TikTok cannot be ignored. In fact, from the news in recent years, we can find that more and more products have become popular through TikTok, even if these products have been sold on platforms such as Amazon before.

A big independent website seller found through data research that at least 40% of TikTok users do not overlap with Amazon and Facebook. This means that both independent website sellers and platform sellers may find new business opportunities on it.

Many people use keyboards every day, but this is the first time I have heard of a single keyboard. Recently, under the hashtag #mechanicalkeyboard, which has nearly 900 million views , a video has been firmly in the first place. This video was posted by the account @plip.works and introduces a single keyboard.

Currently, the account has nearly 190,000 followers and has received nearly 8 million likes. A total of 12 videos have been released, all of which introduce this single keyboard. Among them, there are 5 videos with over a million views , and the highest number of them is 36.4 million. The video shows that you can type "I LOVE YOU" with this single keyboard . Not only that, by looking through these videos, you can find that in addition to typing, you can also use this keyboard to play Tetris.

This novel keyboard also successfully aroused the interest of TikTok users. In the comment section, many people expressed their desire to have such a keyboard and asked where they could buy it.

A search on Amazon revealed that this keyboard is also being sold by sellers for $16.99, which is much cheaper than the $35 offered by the independent site linked to by TikTok above.

This is a standard HID keyboard with programmable keys . You can set keyboard buttons. Support any key keyboard, support combination keys, mouse click function... Seeing this, I believe that cross-border workers who consume too much F5 key also want to have one.

In recent years, we have seen all kinds of incredible products, from leggings to carpet cleaners, become popular on TiTok. Every time these products become popular, their sales on the Amazon platform will increase. Some even top the hot list of the category. Sellers who have noticed this trend have also begun to plan to deploy this channel.

SHEIN plays with Tikok, and sellers show their marketing skills

In May 2021 , SHEIN ended Amazon's record of topping the US shopping app list for 152 consecutive days. Many institutions predict that SHEIN's revenue will surpass ZARA in 2021 .

In Europe and the United States, if you open the APP store, SHEIN will definitely be in the top ten . It has even long occupied the first place in some countries such as the UK and France.

SHEIN's sudden rise in Europe and the United States is inseparable from its successful marketing on social media. As we all know, SHEIN is a master of social media and can be called the originator. According to data from Similarweb, social networks are the second largest source of traffic for SHEIN after search, accounting for more than 9%.

On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other major social media platforms, SHEIN has been very successful in using the mass matrix content marketing method. After the rise of TikTok, it copied this method on TikTok.

In addition to collaborating with top-notch KOLs to promote their products through facial recognition, SHEIN also leverages global fans, passers-by, and content creators (KOCs) in the form of commissions and free products .

For example , in terms of KOLs, SHEIN has worked with Addison Rae, the second-ranked influencer on TikTok, who currently has 86 million followers. Through the celebrity effect of such top influencers, on the one hand, it can enhance the brand's image and change people's perception of SHEIN as low-end and cheap. On the other hand, its huge fan base will also bring considerable sales.

As for fans, passers-by and KOCs, SHEIN does not restrict the content they post, which means that both praise and complaints are welcome.

With the dual effects of KOL and KOC, SHEIN has formed a "flywheel effect" on TikTok.

Not only that, in the UK and Indonesia, SHEIN has now opened up the "TikTok Shop". TikTok users can simply click on the little yellow cart below to directly purchase the clothes that the celebrities wear in the video, directly opening the purchase link.

According to Fanbyte Academy, SHEIN has become one of the most popular fast fashion brands on TikTok in 2020. At present, SHEIN 's official account on TikTok has 3.3 million followers , and the videos posted include not only fashion clothing, but also various popular kitchen and life props such as faucet filters, fruit peelers, omelette molds, backpack pendants, etc.

There are currently 10 SHEIN -related hashtags on TikTok, and the top three in terms of views are #shein (19.6 billion), #SHEINfashionweek (7.8 billion), and #sheinhaul (4.1 billion).

For Generation Z consumers, SHEIN has become synonymous with the TikTok phenomenon, and the unboxing and outfit sharing videos of "Shein hauls" posted by celebrities are very popular among them.

As a new traffic track, TikTok has opened up another massive traffic entrance for independent website sellers, and some independent websites have even successfully taken off with the help of it. Newme, a DTC home brand founded in 2020 and receiving a new round of millions of dollars in 2021, is one of them.

New brands will continue to emerge in the process of the birth of any new traffic channel, and brands will also gain a lot of dividends from it. It is reported that all of Newme's revenue comes from TikTok, of which 95% relies on short videos and 5% comes from live broadcasts. It mainly targets TikTok's developed country markets, and its sales areas are concentrated in the United States, the Middle East and the United Kingdom.

Newme's official account on TikTok has nearly 110,000 followers, and its videos have received 930,000 likes. It has released nearly 300 videos, with views ranging from a few thousand to a million, and most of them have received tens of thousands. One video that has received nearly 1.1 million views introduces five products: a pull-out faucet, a hand sanitizer dispenser, a lidded trash can, a beauty brush cleaning bowl, and a beauty tool drying bowl. Another video introducing a multifunctional medicine box that can grind and cut pills and comes with a small brush even received 3.5 million views.

In fact, in addition to short video production, Newme has made comprehensive arrangements in live streaming, TikTok celebrity marketing and advertising.

If you pay attention to the products that are popular on TikTok and Newme, you will find that many of them have already been sold on Amazon, but the same products continue to be popular on TikTok. Gu Jun, co-founder and CEO of Newme, believes that this is because videos and live broadcasts have opened up a new way and scenario for interpreting products.

He said that in TikTok, which includes new scenarios and new population factors , there are three category opportunities: 1. The explosive space for innovative categories (i.e. categories that have never been seen before); 2. Innovative functions for mature categories; 3. Alternative expressions for mature categories (videos and live broadcasts are opening up many alternative ways of expression for mature categories).

It is worth noting that although the revenue brought by live broadcasting currently only accounts for 5% of GMV, for many sellers who also conduct live broadcasting but have little effect, the effect of Newme has been very significant. It is reported that Newme started its first live broadcast in July 2021, and now one of its accounts has made it into the top ten TikTok live broadcast accounts. This is a gradual process. At first, it broadcast once a week, then once a day, and then twice a day, but each broadcast has a foreign anchor.

Newme's TikTok traffic conversion positions are mainly independent sites and Amazon. It is reported that the Newme independent site, which was launched in March 2021, currently has a monthly GMV growth rate of more than 100% month-on-month, which shows that the sales conversion effect is very good.

Not only independent site sellers, but since the beginning of 2021, we have seen news that many Amazon sellers are planning to deploy TikTok, recruit relevant talents, and form teams, including the well-known and popular Anker Innovations.

At present, Anker's official account on TikTok has 310,000 followers and 2 million likes on its videos. In addition, it has several other accounts in Indonesia, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, etc. Among them, the number of followers of the Indonesian account is very impressive: 620,000, and the number of followers of the Vietnamese account is nearly 210,000.

Judging from the videos that Anker has released on TiKToK, its types are not limited to traditional product reviews, but also include word-of-mouth promotion, situational drama, and product placement.

Judging from the above three sellers, although the final presentation method is video, everyone’s marketing approach is not exactly the same. Therefore, if sellers want to seize TikTok’s massive traffic and reap this bonus, they need to combine their own product characteristics and find a marketing method that matches themselves.

TikTok has become a must-see for sellers, beating Google in traffic and topping the list

For cross-border e-commerce sellers, traffic represents sales, so TikTok, which has a huge user base and continues to grow in popularity and status , has become a battleground for them.

Google Trends shows that TikTok's global popularity has been rising since 2019, and has remained high from June to August 2021. Among them, Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Myanmar have the highest search popularity, while Russia, Iran, and Ukraine have the lowest search popularity.

In September 2021, TikTok's global monthly active user base exceeded 1 billion, making it a global mainstream social media that can rival Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. According to application statistics compiled by Apptopia , TikTok is the most downloaded application in the world, with 656 million downloads in 2021. According to data from data company Sensor Tower, as of July this year, TikTok's downloads have exceeded 3 billion.

Recently, Cloudflare, a cloud infrastructure company that tracks Internet traffic , said that the number of clicks on this popular video application has surpassed the technology giant Google, which has dominated the list for many years, and has become the most visited Internet website in the world in 2021. In the 2020 list, TikTok was only ranked seventh, which shows its rapid development. The ranking shows that TikTok beat Google to the top in February, March and June 2021, and has been in the first position since August.

Insider Intelligence recently predicted that TikTok will become the world's third-largest social network in 2022. After growing 59.8% in 2020 and 40.8% in 2021, TikTok is expected to reach 755 million monthly users by 2022.

Although TikTok’s rapid development in the past two years is partly related to the epidemic, judging from the development of its brother Douyin in China, short videos are indeed the trend of the future and have unlimited commercial potential.

After the ban and re-ban storm, TikTok has also opened the door to the most commercially valuable market, and now TikTok is about to enter the commercialization stage. It is reported that TikTok has recently launched an e-commerce product, TikTok Shopping, which is a product series based on the TikTok ecosystem that integrates sales and advertising functions. It is divided into two modes: TikTok Shop and TikTok Storefront. In addition, TikTok Shopping also includes four promotional functions: Product Links, LIVE Shopping, Collection Ads, and Dynamic Showcase Ads.

According to Ran Finance, TikTok shopping has achieved phased success in the UK. In mid-November, a company called Made in London announced that one of their accounts sold about 100,000 pounds in one live broadcast.

TikTok has officially stood at the critical point between the traffic dividend period and the monetization dividend period. In this case, what cross-border e-commerce sellers need to do is to plan as early as possible and quickly accumulate traffic. To quote a seller: "Evening is not as good as morning, sooner or later it will be launched."

However, facing this blue ocean of traffic, if sellers want to quickly accumulate traffic and sell products well, they must first understand the content forms that perform well, understand the characteristics of the user groups, and create fan portraits.

Not surprisingly, TikTok usage is highest among young people. A March 2020 report from Marketing Charts shows that TikTok reaches 38.1% of 18-24 year olds. That's more than three times the rate among 35-44 year olds (11.7%). In the youngest age group, it also has a greater influence on women (45.2%) than men (31.2%). This trend is confirmed in most age groups, especially in the 25-34 age group, where nearly a quarter (24.3%) of female users use the app, about twice as many as male users of the same age (12.4%).

What kind of content is more likely to attract these users? It is understood that the five most popular video types on the TikTok platform include:

1. Hashtag challenge video. GUESS, a well-known American fashion brand , once launched the #InMyDenim challenge, guiding consumers to shoot videos to show their unique denim clothing. In addition, 4 Internet celebrities were invited to participate in the challenge and provided reference templates for creative videos. Now the challenge has received more than 5.3 million views. 2. Music and dance videos. People who often watch Douyin are very familiar with this type of video. 3. Pet life videos. We all know that the pet economy is very prosperous in many European and American countries, which is also a confirmation. 4. Comedy videos. 5. Decompression videos.

Nowadays, many sellers choose to cooperate with influencers for marketing, so what is the most popular form of cooperation with TikTok influencers?

1. Use visual effects to highlight products. This is effective for fashion products. For example, we are often attracted by some "cross-dressing" and "card point" videos. 2. Unboxing evaluation. This form is more commonly used for 3C products. 3. Oral explanation. This form is like Li Jiaqi, where the anchor introduces the characteristics and advantages of the product. 4. Plot. Insert some advertisements in the plot. 5. Implantation. Without changing the style of the celebrity video, some soft implantation is performed.

TikTok training courses worth tens of thousands of yuan are sold on a certain website for tens of yuan

Many sellers want to seize the business opportunities, but TikTok is an overseas social media platform after all, and sellers are still unfamiliar with its gameplay, so they all choose to find training institutions to learn. In recent years, it can also be found that TikTok-related training institutions have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. However, the editor would like to remind you that training is risky and you need to be cautious when paying for it.

In December 2021 , someone anonymously complained about a Henan company on the Black Cat Complaint Platform, claiming that the company engaged in deceptive behavior in the name of TikTok training and violated business integrity.

According to the netizen, he paid a total of nearly 2,600 yuan for a one-year training period, mainly learning how to increase followers on Tiktok. However, after paying the money, the teacher never took the initiative to communicate and had a bad attitude. Whenever he had a problem and asked for help, he would just ask him to watch the tutorial. The other party didn't understand anything. After he asked for a refund and a change of teacher but was rejected, the other party directly lost contact and the teaching was interrupted. "Later, I found that many people on the Black Cat platform had encountered the same situation."

Yien.com observed that there are many pitfalls in Tiktok training. Someone said that he found that his friend paid tens of thousands of yuan to learn the Tiktok online tutorial, but he could buy it on the second-hand platform MoYu for just a few dozen yuan. Others reported that the videos they made were used by others as a display for external payment, and the other party claimed that the video was used for testing and the effect was very good.

Regarding this phenomenon, some netizens joked: "The best way for TikTok to monetize is to open training courses."

In fact, there are many cases like this where there is no actual operation, but only a simple understanding, and then exaggerating and promoting how bright its future is, so as to attract others to participate in training, or taking advantage of information asymmetry to cheat sellers out of money. When sellers are anxious to deploy TikTok and monetize massive traffic, it should be difficult for them to imagine that they have become the leeks in the hands of others.

As a new traffic outlet, TikTok is a rare new opportunity for cross-border e-commerce sellers. It is understandable and necessary to want to seize it, but it is difficult to learn by yourself, and you are worried about being ripped off by looking for training institutions. So how should sellers treat TikTok-related training courses?

Blogger "Amazon Head Brother" does not recommend seller training courses. He believes that TikTok is basically full of leftovers from Douyin. There are no more than two training institutions in China that are truly capable and can play TikTok well. Therefore, it is better to learn on your own than to randomly find a training institution to learn. "For example, if you are selling pet toys, you can find a few TK celebrities in this category and follow them to see how they shoot videos, how they write copy, and how they write tags. Just follow their example."

Senior e-commerce seller "Factory Manager in the Wind" also believes that 95% of courses for novices are ineffective. "It's hard to say whether they will be used to make money, but 95% of people will give up for various reasons. Because everyone has different abilities, resources, and most importantly, willpower. The 5% must have the ability, resources, or willpower."

If you really need training, how do you tell whether the training is good or bad? He said that first of all, you should look at the qualifications and reputation of the institution, as well as the reputation of the instructor. It is best to have an endorsement, and be careful of those without any endorsement.

Obviously, the current TikTok training is full of water and mixed. Many of them are using various gimmicks to create momentum, but after collecting high tuition fees, the teaching is copy-paste, full of rhetoric, without substantive content, or basic things that can be found with a simple search. Therefore, for such training institutions, the editor recommends that if it is necessary to participate, you must learn more and compare. Otherwise, registering a Tiktok account yourself and spending a few days studying it is more practical than some training courses.

In conclusion: It is reported that since August 2021, at least 18 retail brands, covering categories such as clothing, footwear, cosmetics and accessories, have mentioned the benefits of TikTok to their brands in conference calls with analysts and investors. The new cross-border e-commerce model brought by Tik Tok is on the rise.

In early 2021 , Instagram developed a TikTok-like feature called Reels. At the end of the year, a spokesperson for Meta (formerly Facebook) also confirmed in an email that they were testing a reward mechanism in the United States, and it was expected that the total reward money flowing to UP hosts would be up to US$1 billion.

There is no such thing as a quick buck without a profit. The fact that these competitors are catching up with TikTok also indirectly confirms the promising prospects of this model.

Currently, the business model on Tiktok is becoming mature. In this process, the main problems that sellers need to solve are: 1. Talent issues, such as Tiktok operations and overseas anchors; 2. Traffic hoarding.

It is also worth noting that automotive supplies, beauty products, household items, hand accessories, novelty toys, etc. now have obvious advantages on Tiktok , and sellers can try to layout around these categories.

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Cross-border e-commerce